Doctor Who_ Placebo Effect Part 29

The man with the binocular things lowered them. He was Agent Carruthers, apparently. "The blasters are having no effect, Sarge. Slowing them a bit but they'll be here in moments.'

As Sam watched, the larval creatures were indeed shuffling across the rough ground at an alarming rate. She looked at the gun, then at the slugs.

'Well, I don't suppose I can very well talk you out of this...' she sighed.

She aimed and fired a concentrated burst, trying not to drop the gun. It had a far more powerful kickback than she had antic.i.p.ated.

But her fire found its mark. One of the creatures was rearing up as it was. .h.i.t and it seemed to slow momentarily. At first, Sam thought she had actually killed it, but it shook slightly and a whole body's worth of skin just sloughed off, revealing new skin beneath. The creature continued its relentless advance.

Across the way, Sam recognised her Regency-clad friends from the hotel, plus Gar the V'orrn. They were in danger of being swarmed over as they tried to bring more crippled people out of the Stadium.

'Cover me,' she said to an agent called Klein.

He did so, laying down enough fire to keep the creatures back as Sam raced across the way.

She rugby-tackled Consort Ethelredd to the floor, and smiled grimly as Counsellor De'Ath shrieked when he saw how close the creatures were.

Gar s.n.a.t.c.hed the blaster from Sam's hand. 'Good to see you again,' he snapped.

'You too,' she said, pus.h.i.+ng Ethelredd and De'Ath away from the battle lines.'Go on, get away with these people.'

De'Ath started to move but Ethelredd stood his ground. Reaching into a nearby troop carrier he unloaded some blaster rifles, throwing one to Sam and another to De'Ath, who looked as if he had been asked to shoot himself.

Ethelredd powered the blaster up and silently stood beside Sam and Gar, joining them in firing at the creatures.

'Oh, what the h.e.l.l!' said De'Ath, kneeling beside them.

One creature was very close, lying flat as it slithered over and Sam could see a slight hollow at the front, like a giant mouth.

De'Ath fired a long, unflinching blast straight down this indentation and a moment later the creature exploded into hundreds of little bits that stopped moving.

'I'm already nearly out of power,' he said.

Sam glanced behind her, feeling a draught as the ambulances took off.

Freed from their medical obligations, more SSS agents joined the battle.

Dr Miles Mason s.h.i.+vered. He felt the power inside him, knowing he could not - indeed, would not - need to maintain his human body for much longer.

He was destined to be a Swarm Leader, side by side with the Wirrrn Queen. But before he could take his designated place, there was a small matter to attend to. Beside him stood a number of athletes, from a variety of differing races. All of them had taken the red pills, believing that they would enhance their athletic capabilities. But it was all a lie, for the pills were little more than placebos, no stronger than basic painkillers. What the red ones in fact contained were the faster-acting Wirrrn agents, already at work inside them, disa.s.sembling and then rebuilding each user's DNA, creating a new Wirrrn.

He looked around for some of the takers of the blue pills. It would be months, possibly years, before they joined the hive-mind, but their fate was unavoidable. A Wirrrn would build itself inside each athlete, slowly, invisibly and implacably. And since the mutagens could be transferred genetically, Wirrrn numbers would increase exponentially.

'Now?' hissed a Werelox, staggering slightly.

Mason nodded.'Now.'

His army slowly moved forward, merging into the crowd, deliberately adding to the chaos and panic created not only by Mason's bomb, but by the battle raging outside. SSS agents had sealed the Stadium entrances, thinking they had locked the Wirrrn out. But really...

Mason was interrupted by a scream - one of the Skirkon pentathletes had seemingly exploded in a shower of body parts, revealing a Wirrrn grub, which launched itself at the nearest spectators. Mason smiled as three more of his drug takers did the same thing, and within moments people were running blindly. All over the Stadium, more Wirrrn were bursting out from the athletes' twisted bodies, spreading the infection.

The SSS agents were panicking. They couldn't fire their blasters very easily for fear of taking innocent lives. Witnessing the new Wirrrn births was delightful, but it was time to move on and make his way back to his Queen.

He knew that the end was not far off, now. The gates had opened and extra SSS agents ran in. with more powerful weapons. New-born Wirrrn withered under the a.s.sault, but enough damage had been done. The Wirrrn would succeed.

With a final glance at the beauty of his victory, Miles Mason slipped past an SSS agent and back outside. Already he could feel his flesh pustulating and splitting as the Wirrrn cells in his body finally took control.

'We have to stop these things getting inside the stadium,' yelled what was obviously a high-ranking officer. 'There are thousands of civilians still in there.'

A white-coated SSS scientist was walking up behind the officer, and Sam suddenly remembered the Doctor's realisation about... what was the name? Mason.

'Dr Mason?' she shouted.

Sure enough, there was a brief moment when the man in white stopped, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his eyes up to look at her. The SSS officer did the same and then drew his blaster pistol.

He swung around, but Mason was almost upon him.

Shooting greeny-brown slugs was one thing, Sam decided. But this was a man. A human. She couldn't...

A blast from behind Mason took him squarely in the back, throwing him to the ground.

And Sam saw Kyle Dale, staring in complete shock, letting his blaster fall to the floor.

She wanted to go to him, tell him it was all right. But it wasn't, was it?

Kyle had devoted his entire existence to life and the spiritual well-being of the living, however misguided certain aspects of his beliefs were.

And now he had killed someone.

Or rather hadn't, as Sam saw Mason stagger up, his body almost exploding as the alienness inside him took control. Within seconds, like Torin Chalfont before, he was a man-shaped blob of viscous mucus. Only his head still had a vestige of humanity.

'Hear me, aliens,' he hissed. 'Hear me and prepare to be absorbed!'

The SSS officer blew his head off and the body sagged, then fell.

Sam waved Kyle over as a shout went up from Sergeant Dallion.

'Commandant Ritchie! They're retreating!'

The SSS officer who had killed the former Dr Mason turned, smiling. 'Good.

Back to the tunnels where they belong.'

'But the Doctor's in there!' she yelled.

Dallion and her men started forward, moving as one, still blasting at the retreating monsters.

Few of the slugs appeared to have been killed, but many were presumably wounded, as a great many bits of shed skin lay scattered in the sand.

Sam slung her rifle over her shoulder and took off after Dallion, aware that Gar was beside her.

'Beats standing to attention on the s.p.a.ce Pioneer , anyway,' he grunted.

As if that wasn't enough, Sam realised that running to catch them up was Kyle. She was going to say something but he shouted to her first. 'I have to try to save Reverend Lukas, Jolyon and the others.'

A new mission for the young man, at least. At last.

Within moments the three of them had caught up with Dallion and her men.

A look of respect pa.s.sed between Dallion and the V'orrn - soldier to soldier.

How b.l.o.o.d.y macho, Sam thought. Typical. Meanwhile, those things are right behind the Doctor and that green woman, Socks or whatever she was called.

She pushed past the soldiers and looked into the dark tunnels. 'Well,' she said to everyone else. 'Anyone fancy a spot of potholing?'

Back at the disaster site, Consort Ethelredd was talking to Ritchie, Summer and Green Fingers.

'If those things come back, we could use the weapons on the s.p.a.ce Pioneer to fry them.'

'The Pioneer has armaments?' Sumner was appalled. 'But there was nothing in the doc.u.mentation about the d.u.c.h.ess arriving in an armed wars.h.i.+p!'

De'Ath sighed. 'We were hardly going to transport one of the Royal Family in a s.h.i.+p halfway across the galaxy without being able to defend ourselves, Coordinator. There are people out there who would like to see Earth's First Family done away with.'

'Ourselves included at times,' muttered Ethelredd.

'So of course we were heavily armed.' De'Ath ignored his a.s.sociate. 'Now, if we bring the s.h.i.+p here, we will have the firepower to stop them.'

'We could blow the tunnels to pieces,' suggested Green Fingers, but Ritchie shook his head.

"The conflagration would hit the power generator. Apart from vaporising about eight square kilometres, including the Stadium, Micawber's World would be bereft of all but a few safety backups. It'd be covered in ice in hours, dead within a day.' He looked at the two from the Royal Party. 'I think your suggestion is a good one. I'll have some SSS transport s.h.i.+ps flown here as well. Let's do it and meet up here in twenty minutes. Is that enough time?'

Ethelredd agreed and dragged De'Ath away, saying all they had to do was drag their pilot out of whichever sleazy bar he had found for himself.

'I can pilot a s.h.i.+p like that,' De'Ath complained.

'I know,' retorted Ethelredd. 'Which is why I'd rather find a drunken pilot.

You behind the controls is something I don't think I could bear to see...'

Their bickering faded as Ritchie looked at the devastation.

'I don't want to count the dead. It's too many.'

'It would have been a lot more if we hadn't been prepared,' Green Fingers said calmly.'Let's be thankful for that.'

Madox and two other Teknix stalked through the corridors of the SSS building, heading for Ritchie's office. There were few people around to stop them and they were very good at hiding whenever anyone did approach them.

Taking the elevator, they reached the Commandant's office, and Madox went in first, sweeping the outer room with his blaster, ready to fire if he saw his target.

The room was empty.

His two fellows came in, and so Madox opened the door to Ritchie's private room.

Empty. Madox frowned and stared harder.

He then pointed to the far wall, where it joined the window.

The faint outline of a part.i.tion was visible and one of his Teknix shoved at it.

Sure enough, it slid open revealing a small walkway. And two humans being held captive by another Teknix, a blaster held against their heads.

Madox a.s.sumed this to be Ritchie's wife and son, presumably headed here to find the Commandant and instead met the alien-infected Kra.s.six.

This all went through Madox's mind as the Teknix who opened the door was blasted lifeless back against the opposite wall of the office by the Kra.s.six/Foamasi hybrid.

The human woman pulled her son to the floor suddenly and before Kra.s.six could react, he was thrown a few metres backwards into the room. The other two Teknix had shot him squarely in the chest.

Madox pelted into the corridor, leaping over the frightened humans, knowing his partner would take them to safety. He saw Kra.s.six stagger up, expecting to see the familiar Foamasi body bulging through the disguise.

Instead, the blast had revealed green bubbling mucus, and with a terrible high-pitched screech, whatever Kra.s.six really was ran at him.

Calmly and methodically, as all Teknix were, Madox altered his blaster setting and calmly emptied the entire charge into Kra.s.six's leaping body, blasting it into tiny pieces. As the noise abated, Madox regarded the bits of mucus splattered across the roof and walls.

Satisfied that it was completely dead and the honour of the Teknix was secure, he walked slowly over to Commandant Ritchie's family.

Finding the lair of the Wirrrn Queen had not been difficult. The orange glow seemed to suffuse the tunnel walls, creating an apparent invitation.

Within five minutes, the Time Lord and his new Jadean a.s.sociate were facing a nightmare.

The Wirrrn Queen, bloated and writhing in pleasure, looked down at them, at least ten times larger than any other Wirrrn the Doctor could remember seeing. All those years ago, paradoxically in the future.

And he remembered what the Wirrrn had said then. How they had been forced to flee their homelands in the Andromeda Galaxy by humanity, who had entered their galaxy and hunted them.

So, why were they here, thousands of years previously? Of course, the Wirrrn were among the most intelligent and resourceful creatures he had encountered. Even back then, he had never felt quite that sure about their motives - they had been prepared to destroy everything that remained of the human race, stored and asleep in a vast s.p.a.ce ark. Survival or revenge? He had never been completely convinced whether it was one or other, or a bit of both. But the Wirrrn had proven a relentless, opportunist enemy, outsmarting him and the tiny group of humans alive who had awoken on the ark. It had taken the last vestiges of humanity in an absorbed human to rid the ark of the Wirrrn by deliberately leading them into a damaged escape s.h.i.+p that exploded shortly after departure.

But what if the humans they claimed had hunted them were in fact themselves fighting back - from an earlier Wirrrn invasion?

Such as this one.